2. Schoolrooms, science, female intuition

‘Schoolrooms, science, female intuition’ describes the teaching in the medieval schoolroom and explains that few women at the time of Chaucer learned to read and write. Schoolboys entered the educational scheme at the trivium, which was dedicated to grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Beyond this lay the higher arts of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). Chaucer’s engagement with these levels is shown in his works the Boece and Treatise on the Astrolabe. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale and Man of Law’s Tale, Chaucer shows how he is sympathetic to women, depends upon their patronage and protection, imitates their voices, and tries to please them.

6. Something to believe in

It is no simple matter to access Chaucer’s religion. We are separated from Chaucer not just by the Reformation, but by the Counter-Reformation too. The range of Christian belief expressed by Chaucer’s pilgrims is remarkably broad, ranging from the orthodox perfectionism embraced by the professional religious, such as the nuns, to its explicit rejection by the Wife of Bath, and others. ‘Something to believe in’ explains that the variety of belief explored in Chaucer’s writing is, by any standard, extraordinary. It discusses the different examples of paganism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and thresholds to other worlds in his work. Chaucer was a sublime poet who explored many forms and objects of belief.

5. Organizing, disorganizing

‘Organizing, disorganizing: The Canterbury Tales’ describes the structure and content of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The chief precedent for this work as a framed collection is the Decameron, heroically written in response to the 1348 plague, but then retouched by Boccaccio until his death in 1375. Chaucer heard much about Boccaccio during his visit to Florence in 1373, the year of the world’s first lecturae Dantis (Dante lectures, organized and given by Boccaccio). Chaucer’s Tales exist over fifty-five manuscripts; tale orders vary and ‘fragments’ float. For Chaucer, the framed collection provided a convenient workshop and repository for all kinds of writing, some of it drafted much earlier.

4. Poetry at last

‘Poetry at last: Troilus and Criseyde’ describes the structure and content of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. Since London styled itself ‘Troynovant’ or ‘New Troy’, imagining itself founded by the Trojan-Latin Brutus, Chaucer immediately saw great potential in Boccaccio’s ottava rima tale, Il Filostrato. The Boccaccio-inspired Troilus and Criseyde tells of a doomed love affair in a doomed city. For three-fifths of its length its trajectory is seemingly comic, or upward-moving, but it is defined as a tragedy. The dense allusiveness of Troilus and Criseyde suggests that Chaucer is writing a poem to be pondered over, many times, rather than listened to once.

7. Performance and new Chaucers

Creative responses to Chaucer, across the world, have never been more varied and vibrant. This repairs some shortcomings of earlier centuries, where imitators have generally reworked entrenched ideas of a fatherly, and occasionally misbehaving, Chaucer, although an exception must be made for Shakespeare, who was a brilliant early reader of Chaucer. ‘Performance and new Chaucers’ considers the globalization of Chaucer and looks at how his work has influenced the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Lavinia Greenlaw. Marilyn Nelson, and Caroline Bergvall. The extraordinary growth of translations worldwide since 2000 suggests new esteem for Chaucer as the poet of an unfinished Englishness ripe for translation, adaptation, and local variation.

3. A life in poetry

It was once thought that Chaucer’s creative career developed from a French phase through Italian to a final triumph of English, but Chaucer never stopped learning from Francophone poets, and never stopped speaking French. ‘A life in poetry’ explains how Chaucer was then inspired by the verse forms of Dante’s Commedia and Boccaccio’s the Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia and Il Filostrato. Italian proved liberatory for Chaucer not just because its hendecasyllabic (eleven syllable) lines allow more poetic elbow room than French octosyllabics, but because its metrics lie much closer to English. Chaucer finally settled on a form he seems to have invented: rhyme royal, a seven-line stanza, rhyming ababbcc.

1. Beginnings

‘Beginnings’ describes Geoffrey Chaucer’s life and work as a civil servant, along with why his writing has inspired so many. His most important role was controller, or chief tax inspector, of wool for Edward III from 1374–1386. Chaucer understood many languages, but it was his decision to write exclusively in English that gave him the opportunity to write afresh, inventively, and without worrying about burdens of precedent. Chaucer was as finely attuned to audience reactions inside and outside his text-worlds as any dramatist. His poetry has designs on its readers, stirring strong emotions. At the same time, it is keen to deny responsibility for any views or opinions raised, or conclusions reached.